sylvester

happy new year!
me and lc's been stuffing our faces with pasta and chocolate icecream (me) and chinese food and sticky date pudding with butterscotch sauce (lc). if you're nice we might even publish the recipe.

so hope you have a great new year and LOTS of cake and desserts!

Christmas, snow and glögg

So I was supposed to make glögg again so that I had the correct quantity of spices but unfortunately mum and grandma drank what was left of the red wine.
Because of that you'll have to taste as you go but anyway here it is;

Swedish Glögg

4 servings
For about 2 dl red or white (the red is the most classic) wine you need

1 dl water
1 dl sugar
Peal from about half an orange
2 tsp ground clove or about 7 whole ones
2 small sticks of cinnamon broken into smaller pieces
1 tsp of vanilla (aroma or the real thing doesn't matter)
1 1/2 tsp of ground ginger
a little bit of mace

Put the sugar and water in a saucepan and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Ad the spices and boil until you have a relatively thick syrup.

Strain the syrup so that there isn't any bits of the spices left, pour it back into the saucepan and ad the wine, let everything come up to a boil.

Next part is optional but I think it gives the glögg an extra kick; take the glögg from the stove and ad 2 tbsp of gin (or vodka or any other strong booze you like), then you flambé it.

Serve hot with raisins and blanched almonds.

It taste best if you've been outside in the snow and are really cold, but the new trend here in Sweden is to drink it cold with an ice cube in it.

You can also replace the whine with apple juice to make an alcohol free version or just boil the wine until the alcohol has disappeared, but then you might want to make the syrup stronger or buy something called aromatic tincture (the pharmacists sell it).
The glögg can also be seasoned with saffron, lingonberries, chili, mandarin and more...

Tomorrow Herbert is coming home for the holiday and we're probably going to make some Christmas candy.
At the moment we're having trouble with the snow, we almost didn't make it outside today. There haven't been this much snow for a very long time and it's a bit daunting when the snow come halfway up the windows, I think that last night it came about 1 meter of snow.

We'll just have to wait to see what tomorrow brings...

yes i am procrastinating. it's my middle name.

ever had that "ohmygawd-i've-got-to-finish-this-rapport-i'm-suppodsed-to-hand-in-tomorrow-and-i've-been-procrastinating-for-a-month-i-need-some-serious-chocolatcake"-feeling? that's pretty much my day. so i thought i'd make some easypeasy chocolate spongecake with frosting. ha. i've got butter all over my kitchen floor, cause the pan leaked. when i took the cake out of the pan half of didn't come out, so the cake was crooked. the cream cheese fronsting tasted wierd, and daft as i am i added cocoa to it so it looked like... yeah. you know. adding sprinkles didn't help. dusted it with cocoa. didnt help. finally- choconut shavings gave the cake a sort of neat impression. but if you feel like making a chocolatcake i'd recomend using perhaps this: from annie or this from joy or if you can read swedish this one. am 100% sure they tase so much better than mine.

 

actually. it doesn't look to bad. the power of choconut. 

but it also makes me think of this site. unfortunalty it's in swedish, but oh so hilarious.

now, i'm going to continue writing and listening to this.

Teaser

Just to let you know I'm working on a new post, since it's winter and almost christmas I have developed a recipe for the swedish mulled wine called glögg that I'll post soon just a few more tweaks needed. And we're also getting a new guest-blogger, our mother, who will post a recipe on a chocolate mousse cake with pears.

And I do promise the post's will come soon.

winter winds

as lc said; sorry but i'm stuck in the woods. literally. no driverslicense and lousy bus-connections makes herbert all work and no play. too further spoil my return to civilization my hometown has been struck with a parasite in the drinking water so i'm not sure i want to risk giong home...

enough with the whining. it's a winter wonderland, on a clear day the temperature crawls down to below 20 celcius.

coconut-tops and even more biscotti- this time with chocolate

coconut-tops are a go-to cake in sweden, like spongecake or shortbread. i used this recipe.

oven 175 degrees celcius
50 g butter/margarine
2 eggs
1 dl granulated sugar
5,5 dl coconut shavings
1 tblsp white rum

 

chocolate 70%

melt the butter and stir in with the rest of the ingredients. let the batter rest for about 10 min. by using two teaspoons (or tablespoons) distribute the batter on a bakingparchment, making little top-shapes. bake for 15 minutes in the middle of the oven. let the cakes cool in the fridge. when they're cool melt some chocolate and dip the bottom (and perhaps on top?) in chocolate.

chocolate-biscotti

 oven 225 degrees

100g softened butter/margarine

1 dl granulated sugar

2 eggs

2 dl chopped almonds

0,5 dl cocoa powder

2 tblsp vanillasugar

3,5 dl flour

1 tsp bakingpowder

beat butter and sugar "fluffy" with a electrical blender (yeah, i know. wierd sentence but you know what i mean). mix in the rest of the ingredients and let rest in the fridge. divide the batter in three parts and make three rolls. place on bakingsheet with parchment and bake for about 10 min. while still warm, cut diagonal pieces about 1-2 wide. let dry in a 100 degree oven for aprox 1 hour. now i was to impatient and didn't let my biscotti dry enough so they where kind of chewy in the middle... so a word of wisdom- if the cakes are still soft, let them dry a bit longer. also, i think mixing in chocolat chips in the batter whould be kinda wonderful. just sayin'.

The Difference

So it's a week since I should have posted this, sorry but I'm a incorrigible time optimist.
If you're wondering whats been up I'll post some pictures at the end of this post, but now moving on to the more important things.





Here in Sweden we usually don't measure with cups when baking, as you might have noticed that in most of the recipes we've posted we use dl.
So why am I bringing this up, well when I first started baking with recipes written in English I didn't know how to translate the measurements but thankfully my mother had a formula on how to change cups into dl. Later on my lovely sister bought me a selection of cup measurements so now I can just use them.

So now I'm gonna share;
1 dl equals 100 ml
1 cup equals 250 ml which is equal to 2 1/2 dl
1/2 cup equals 125 ml which is 1 1/4 dl

And so on...

(hi, herbert here. i'm crashing lc's post. if you are lazy like me and can't be bothered with mental arithmetic (headcounting) or whatever here's a nifty link to a converter..)
Had to change Herberts spelling we do NOT count heads here in Sweden, anymore anyway.

Now on to the recipe I promised:

Chocolate cheesecake brownie

Brownie
150 g butter
1 dl cocoa
3 egg
3 dl caster sugar
2,5 dl flour
1 tsp baking powder
about 50 g dark chocolate
a handful of chopped almonds

Cheesecake
200 g cream cheese
1 egg yolk
3 tbsp caster sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract

Makes about 20

Start with making the brownie;

1. Melt butter and stir in chocolate and cocoa, leave to cool
2. Meanwhile whisk eggs and sugar until light and fluffy.
3. Mix the baking powder with the flour and fold into the egg batter along with the chocolate butter and almonds. (if you want to you can ad a bit more chopped chocolate at this point)

Next, the cheesecake;
4. Stir cream cheese together with egg yolk, sugar and vanilla extract.
5. Line a baking tin with oven paper and pour in the brownie mixture.
6. Spread the cheesecake mixture on top of the brownie mixture and create patterns with the help of a knife or a fork.

7. Bake the cake in the lower part of the oven for about 30 minutes. (It should be sticky but not liquid)
8. Let the cake cool and then cut it into squares.

This is a picture of my second attempt of making macarons, I failed again so no recipe on those...


At November 23 this was not an unusual sight on the island and it got worse...



Last Wednesday the snowing started and it has yet to stop...





The new mittens I bought, they are really warm...


Me with Christmas lighting int the background...

Been sick

Hi everyone
Really sorry that I haven't posted anything in awhile, at the moment I'm getting vaccinated for my allergies and the injections are making me really sick but I'm working on a post with "translation" between cups and dl, it also contains a recipe on cheesecake-brownies and I'll try to get it out there at the latest on Sunday.
The reason for Herberts absence is mainly because she is stuck in the wild doing an internship, but she has promised to post something soon.

Hope you'll forgive us.